Author's Note: We've reached a turning point of sorts, and we're on the downhill side. Knowing who the bad guy is, well, that's half the battle...right??

As always, thank you SO much for the alerts and most especially the reviews. They help keep me motivated to write!

Disclaimer: Despite my best efforts, I still own nothing! I promise to put Deeks and Kensi and all the rest back as soon as I'm done playing with them.


Operations Manager Hetty Lange paused near the railing on the loft overlooking her….if she was honest…favorite team's bullpen. They were all there, sitting in their normal places in the leisure time that sometimes occurred between cases, but there was something off, she thought to herself. Not with her agents. No, her agents were the very best in the business, and their success rate spoke for itself. They were smart and persistent and oh so very brave, taking their lives in their hands whenever she asked. And she'd had to ask all too often.

She believed in what they did, and she understood the significance of their work. Flag and country were hard taskmistresses, and sometimes even the ultimate sacrifice wasn't enough to silence their demands. Many of the people in her position believed the hardest call to make was the phone call to parents and spouses and families, letting them know that their loved one was never coming home. But Hetty Lange knew better. The hardest call to make was deciding whom to send where. Who dresses up as an arms dealer and who stays back at Ops, listening in. Who wears a wire and pretends to be a dirty agent, and who backs them up. Those were the times when she knew she held lives in her hands, literally. She'd always hated those decisions.

She was happy she had such a capable team leader in Callen. She'd been able to turn a lot of those day-to-day decisions over to him. He was smart, and his instincts were nothing short of brilliant. He always seemed to intuit which team to send to which location. Oh, she still had to make some of the long-term choices. Deep cover wasn't a part of their daily repertoire, but on those cases when it was necessary it required her okay. She still sat in Ops and listened in on almost every operation, and she still gave directions when she thought it was appropriate. But much of the planning she left in Callen's more than capable hands, and she was quite happy to do so.

Mr. Callen was currently sitting back at his desk, trying to read his usual newspaper. He was having some difficulty due to the splint on his left wrist, which made it difficult for him to hold the paper properly. His partner, Sam Hanna, was sitting across from him, an ugly knot marring the smooth skin at the back of his head, visible even at this distance. Perhaps their injuries had caused a part of the off-ness that Hetty could feel permeating her bullpen. But that wasn't all of it.

She turned her attention to the other team sitting at their desks in the enclosed corner they considered their own. Kensi was leaning her head against her hand, elbow propped on her desk next to a stack of files she was slowly but surely thumbing through. Deeks was tapping away on his keyboard, keeping his eyes steady on the screen. It appeared to Hetty that the two of them were determinedly not looking at each other. Apparently they'd had another tiff or disagreement of some sort. That might have contributed to the off feeling, but it couldn't be all of it. The two of them argued and bickered enough that it couldn't possibly generate a great deal of new energy.

No, something was decidedly off in her bullpen, and to her annoyance Hetty couldn't figure out what it was.

Just then, Eric approached her hesitantly. She nodded at him.

"Mr. Beale?"

"Hetty, we've got some new intel on Kensi's poisoning case. Do you want me to call the entire team up, or should we try and…?"

Hetty turned back to look at Kensi once more. The week she'd been given to recover was almost over, but Hetty wasn't sure the agent was completely up to speed. They'd all worked hard to keep her out of the case since she'd returned to work, but there was little Hetty could do now. Short of barring her from Ops, there was no way to prevent her from listening in. Barring her from Ops would certainly clue her in that something was going on without her knowledge, something that was being kept from her. And after what had happened with Deeks' 'firing', Hetty just couldn't bear to do that to her again.

"Call them all up, Mr. Beale."

At his whistle, all four of the agents looked up from the bullpen. With an upraised thumb, Eric signaled them up. But as they began making their way toward the staircase, Kensi was approached by one of the lab techs.

"Kensi..er, Agent Blye, there was something I wanted to show you, if…if you don't mind."

Stifling a sigh of impatience at being distracted from the first real sign of a case since she'd come back to work, Kensi looked at the chem analyst. "I'm sorry, Hatton, but I've just been called up to Ops. Maybe I could swing by later, and see if.."

"No, Kens, it's okay." At some unspoken communication from Hetty, Callen turned to smile reassuringly at the two of them. "You go see what Barkley has. He did save your life, you know. Join us in Ops when you can."

"I know he did." Forcing a smile, Kensi turned back to the other man. She wanted to protest, but Callen's quiet voice had been implacable. "Okay, Hatton, let's go see what you wanted to show me."

Once up in Ops, Hetty turned to her team leader. "Thank you, Mr. Callen. The case in question is Kensi's, and it is perhaps for the best that she isn't here."

Callen nodded, then turned to big screen. "Okay, Eric, what have you got?"

Eric pulled up the police report first. "Well, we all assumed that Kensi's poisoning was accidental because Thomas Hamad, the patriarch of the family, had randomly poisoned the donuts in the case due to a deteriorating mental stability. We determined this due to his manifestos, writings we found on his computer that were posted over time to various anti-government websites." Images of the manifestos showed up on the screen. "But as it turns out, with a little deeper digging we found out the manifestos weren't written on his computer at all. They were planted there. It looks like they were all hidden in files within files so that Hamad himself wouldn't find them. And despite the time-date stamps dating back over the last two years, computer forensics says the first was planted less than six weeks ago."

"That still doesn't mean dude wasn't crazy, " Sam said, frowning up at the screen. "And if he didn't do any of this, why'd he pack up his family and move 'em all out?"

"Turns out he didn't." Nell picked up the narrative now. A grisly image appeared on the screen. "They were all four murdered. Father, mother, both kids. Single gunshots to the head, bodies dumped far enough out that they might not ever have been discovered if a couple of hikers hadn't gotten lost. A search party looking for the hikers stumbled over the bodies instead."

They were all silent, absorbing the impact.

"So Kensi wasn't unlucky," Callen said. "She was targeted."

"But how?" Deeks said, moving around to stand in front of the screen. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the images of those still, small bodies. It took a different kind of monster to commit that kind of atrocity. And now that monster was after Kensi. "How could anyone know we'd be there that day? We didn't plan it. It wasn't part of a regular route. I was practicing my trade craft. No routines, leaving at different times every day and going to different…""

"Relax, Deeks. We're not questioning your security protocols." Sam's voice was reassuring, but it did little to calm Deeks' inner turmoil.

"Well maybe you should be," he said, tone more than a little bitter. Finally he was able to turn around and look at the other agents. "I picked that place. That morning we had an argument about whether or not to get coffee or donuts. She won so we got donuts, but I got to pick the donut place." He took a deep breath. "This is all my fault. I got sloppy somehow, and the bad guys got to her. Again."

"This isn't helping." Callen moved forward, eyes meeting Deeks' gaze squarely. "This isn't your fault, but it doesn't matter anyway. She's okay. All that matters now is figuring out who did it and how."

"It had to be meticulously well-planned," said Nell slowly. She pulled up pictures of the bakery. "The poison was planted in the regular sugar dusting sieve in the kitchen, and the only fingerprints on it were the family's. The donuts in the case seemed to be randomly poisoned. Although the entire back row, which is where the family would serve from first, was affected."

"They couldn't have known we'd be there that day, because we didn't have a routine." Deeks turned back to the screen once more, trying to focus on something more productive than this is all my fault and how could I let this happen again, thoughts that kept circling in his head. "We didn't even plan on going for donuts that morning until after we got in the car. Someone had to have staked out Kensi's place."

"But just staking out and following you two isn't the end of the story," said Callen, frowning. "It had to be someone who knew Kensi. Knew her habits, knew she had a thing for sweets. Knew that sooner or later she'd be stopping in for a donut."

"Someone who knew she favored the kind of donut that had glaze and powdered sugar both." Deeks shook his head slightly. "Kensi's sweet tooth may be legendary here, but it's not part of her legend."

"Someone who didn't care about collateral damage," offered Sam. "There were other donuts in the case, and there could have been other customers in the store. Anyone could have walked in. And we were lucky to have a chemist in-house who could decode the toxin in a matter of hours, but outside would have been different."

"Not only decode the chemical make-up of the toxin, but both develop a formula for the antidote and formulate a dose of it himself." Nell set her tablet down and turned to face the others. "Kensi really was pretty lucky that we have him."

"Wait a minute…did you say formulate a dose himself?" Callen's tone was disbelieving. "You can't possibly formulate antivenom in a matter of hours. It takes days to develop it properly, and if it's not developed properly it remains just as toxic as venom itself. I worked undercover in a herpetarium in La Paz, and I'm telling you it can't be done in hours."

"But if Barkley didn't develop the antivenom that day, it means he'd already created it," Eric said. "And if he'd already created it, it means he knew we'd need it. And the only way he'd know we needed it was if…"

"He was the one who poisoned her in the first place." Callen's mind was moving at light-speed, and he'd just realized something. He began to move towards the doorway. "Just now as we were coming up, he stopped her. Said he needed to show her something. I…I told her to go with him."

"So right now Kensi is with the guy who poisoned her, only she doesn't now he's the guy who poisoned her." Deeks pulled his gun from his holster, Sam right behind him as they followed Callen out the door. "Eric, see if you can find them. Call as soon as you do."

"On it," said Eric, turning back to his computer. Nell picked her tablet up, and they prepared to do what they did best. Hetty took a deep breath, then settled down to wait. She'd been correct when she'd sensed something wrong in her bullpen. What she hadn't realized was that it wasn't the people in the bullpen who were off. It was the presence of evil nearby.


"So, Hatton, what was it you wanted to show me?" The walk to the chem lab had been mostly silent, although Kensi had been able to sense a great deal of tension in Barkley's walk. She rather thought the man had developed a bit of a crush on her, and she didn't want to hurt his feelings or lead him on. She'd have to choose her words carefully.

He unlocked the door to the lab by punching a series of numbers in the keypad and holding his thumb over the sensor, then he opened the door with a flourish. "Come in, Kensi, and I'll be happy to show you what it is. It's pretty…amazing, I think."

She followed him into the lab, then stood in the center of the room, looking around. It was certainly very impressive. There were test tubes and burners and coils everywhere, and it looked like she imagined a mad scientist's lab would look.

"Here, put this on." He handed her a mask much like the clear plastic safety goggles she remembered from when she'd taken chemistry and physics. She put the mask on, then watched as he put one on as well. "Now, step to the side and watch this."

He took her elbow and walked her to one corner of the room, next to a large metal barrel. "Here. Why don't you stand next to this. I think you'll be out of range.."

Obligingly she leaned against the barrel. "Okay. I'm…ready, I guess."

He turned and moved to the other corner of the room. "Now…keep your eyes on the ceiling." She looked up, and he darkened the room. He began fiddling with a series of controls, and then suddenly a burst of light filled the room. Kensi closed her eyes against the miniature starburst, then stared as golden letters bloomed against the ceiling. She held on to her mask as she began to read them.

"I….love….you…Kensi?"

Shaking her head as the letters began to blur out, she dropped her gaze to meet Barkley's stare. "Hatton, that's sweet, really. And very very good. But.."

"Oh, I know. You don't feel that way about me." A hint of a sneer moved briefly across his lips. "You want to be friends."

"Well, yeah." Kensi's vision was still blurred after the fireworks show, but she watched as Hatton approached her. "I mean, you're a great guy. Really, you are, and I owe you a solid for curing me and everything. But I just don't feel that way about you."

"And who do you feel that way about, Kensi?" He leaned in closer to her, and she stepped back until she was fully against the barrel. "Do you feel that way about someone here? Someone at NCIS?"

"Why are you acting this way?" Her vision wasn't just blurred. The room was beginning to spin a bit. "What are you saying?"

"I saw you. Saw you with him. Yesterday, in the bullpen. And this morning. This morning he was at your house." His voice rose, and she winced as her head began to pound. "Did he spend the night?"

"I don't…I don't get it." There were black dots dancing in her vision now, and her knees were decidedly shaky.

In an instant, his expression changed. "That's okay, Kensi. You will. I'm going to help you." He reached out and took off her mask. "I think you've had that on long enough."

"The mask. You…drugged me?"

"Of course I did." He reached out and touched her face, excited when she tried and failed to bring her hand up to stop him. "I had to. I had to do something to make you see reason." Reaching behind her, he pried open the lid to the metal barrel and let it drop to the floor with a clang. "In just a minute, we're going to go somewhere better than this. Someplace safe, where you and I can be alone. We won't ever have to worry about anyone coming between us again."

The black dots grew and encompassed the room, and her limbs were no longer under her control. As she began a slow slide down, she had time for a brief hope that Deeks and the guys figured this out soon before the floor rose up to meet her.


With the ease of years together as partners, Sam and Callen flanked the door to the chem lab, guns raised and ready. Deeks dropped in behind Sam, waiting on the signal to move. To no one's surprise, the door was locked. Callen pulled out his phone and dialed.

"Eric? Can you unlock the chem lab?"

"On it," said Eric, typing away. But he spoke again almost immediately. "Uh, Callen? It looks like Barkley's managed to override security. It's going to take me a few minutes."

"You've got two," said Callen. But it was closer to five before the light flashed green and there was an audible click as the locks disengaged.

The three agents moved into the lab as one, scanning each area of the lab with guns raised.

"Clear." Sam came out of the office, gun down.

"Clear." Callen was behind a partition that sectioned off the back half of the room.

"Clear." Deeks holstered his gun once more, standing in the center of the deserted lab. "Dammit. Where is he? And where's Kensi?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out." Callen pulled out his phone once more, but before he could make the call one of the other lab techs, a slight, dark-haired ballistics expert named Albert Maxey, stuck his head in. "Oh, hey, are you guys looking for Barkley? He left already."

Deeks marched to the door. "Did you see him leave? Where did he go? Was he alone?"

"Whoa," said Maxey, backing up with an alarmed expression on his face. "Intense much?"

"Just answer the questions." Deeks grasped the front of the man's shirt in his hands, and Callen approached with a murmured warning. "Callen, we need to know what this guy knows."

"Yes, we do, but remember he's on our side."

"We thought Barkley was on our side too."

"Come on, Deeks." Callen put a hand on Deeks' arm. "This isn't helping."

With a muttered curse, Deeks let go of the man's shirt and took two small steps back. His eyes never left the other man's face. "Now, answer the questions."

"I did see him leave, actually." Maxey looked away from Deeks, meeting Callen's less threatening gaze. "He was alone. But he was pushing a big heavy barrel on a dolly. I asked him about it, because, you know, we're really not supposed to take materials home unless we follow specific protocols, and there wasn't a yellow security seal on the barrel. Barkley said he was just taking it to the incinerator." Swallowing hard, Sam turned and dropped his head. Callen closed his eyes, but he still managed to grasp Deeks arm as the other man made a furious move towards the door. Maxey continued, speaking faster now. "Bu..but he didn't! Take it to the incinerator I mean. He got on the service elevator and it only went to the ground floor, not the basement."

"He's leaving the mission. Deeks, call Eric and have him send us Barkley's address." Callen grasped Maxey's shoulder briefly. "Thank you. You've been very helpful."

With earwigs in place and guns at the ready, Callen, Sam, and Deeks were in Sam's car within minutes, heading towards the address Eric had programmed into their phones.